UPDATE: Monday, July 20, 2009

Several visitors have contacted me to inform me that after applying my suggestions above, they were still receiving the error message with the red border. Please visit this follow-up post for information on how to possibly fix the problem. Please let me know if it worked for you!

Follow-Up Post: Contact Form 7′s “Failed to send your message” Error

UPDATE: August 27, 2009

If your website is being hosted on GoDaddy and you are using WordPress version 2.8.x (2.8.4 being the latest at time of writing) and the latest version of Contact Form 7 (2.0.1 at time of writing), you are probably visiting this blog because you are getting the annoying “failed to send your message” error (with the red border) in your contact form.

I just found out this evening that after upgrading to Contact Form 7 2.0.1 and WordPress 2.8.4, my contact form won’t send e-mails anymore. When I wrote this post back in April 2009, I was using WP version 2.7.1.

Well, I have good news: I have solved the problem. Please follow the instructions shown below for configuring WP-Mail-SMTP on your GoDaddy-hosted WordPress installation and then continue to the follow-up post above.

The Problem

My blog is being hosted at GoDaddy.com on their Windows hosting package and it’s running off of IIS 7. This service supports PHP 5, which allowed me to install WordPress. One requirement I had was the ability to have a contact form. I found Contact Form 7, which appears to be a popular WordPress plug-in. I installed and configured the plug-in, but I wasn’t able to send e-mail through it. I received the following error message:

I later found out at the Contact Form 7 developer’s blog that the problem was server-related as indicated by the red border. I googled the solution and found it.  Rob Layton posted a very helpful article about how to solve this problem:

http://www.roblayton.net/archive/wordpress-not-sending-emails-anymore-solved/

In short, his solution points to the fact that PHP Mail or SMTP are no longer working after upgrading to a later version of WP. He suggests one of two plug-ins:

• WP-Mail-SMTP
• Cimy Swift SMTP

I opted for WP Mail.

I tried his recommendations which are detailed in his blog entry, but they didn’t work for me. Below is what I did for my GoDaddy account.

Solution

1. Create a new e-mail account using the GoDaddy mail control panel. If you already are using GoDaddy as your e-mail provider, you don’t need to create a new one.
2. Install either WP-Mail-SMTP or Cimy Swift SMTP. Since I am not using Cimy Swift SMTP, my instructions apply to WP-Mail-SMTP, but the solution should be fairly similar for Cimy. Then activate the plug-in.
3. In the WordPress administration console, click “Settings”.
4. Click the Email link under “Settings” (or the equivalent for Cimy). Enter the following data:
   1. From Email: “yourusername@domain.com” (without the quotes). This must be your GoDaddy hosted e-mail account.
   2. From Name: type in either your name or the name of your website. This will make the From line of the e-mail read as “From Name” <yourusername@domain.com>.
   3. Mailer: Choose “Send all WordPress emails via SMTP”. Do not choose the “…PHP mail() function…” because it won’t work.
   4. SMTP Host: relay-hosting.secureserver.net (do not use the SMTP server that GoDaddy provided you during your e-mail account sign-up. For the record, that is smtpout.secureserver.net).
   5. SMTP Port: 25 (default for most SMTP servers).
   6. Encryption: Choose “No encryption”. (I hope you aren’t sending sensitive data!)
   7. Authentication: Choose “No: Do not use SMTP authentication”.
   8. Click the Update Options button. You will be taken to the General Settings tab.
   9. Now click the Email link again. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and type in a valid e-mail address in the To: box under the “Send a Test Email” section.
   10. Click the Send Test button.
   11. If you did everything correctly, you should see the following screen:

Continue to follow-up post (Contact Form 7’s “Failed to send your message” error)…